


After the storm

by wunderlichkind



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Florist AU, Fluff, War AU, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 22:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15082922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wunderlichkind/pseuds/wunderlichkind
Summary: World War II is coming to its end but relief hasn't really reached Marsali - until a long awaited return brings with it a rollercoaster of emotions and unexpected news.





	After the storm

**Author's Note:**

> I've written this for a prompt I got from a trope mash-up: combine "florist AU" and "war AU" with any outlander pairing.  
> As with most of my work, this is not betaed and English is my second (or rather third) language.  
> FEEDBACK IS MUCH APPRECIATED <3.

#### Paris in March of 1945

Marsali’s humming along to the radio quietly, her hands busy with arranging the freshly arrived yellow roses and pink tulips.  
The backroom of the little corner shop is rather dark since there are no windows but there’s a sliver of bright sunlight falling in through the passage between backroom and the backside of the counter and the sweet smell of the fresh flowers does its part in making spring palpable. It’s not just the good weather though, it’s the entire city.   
These days, Paris has decided to spread her wings again and show her beauty and her people are following her call to celebration.  
They deserve this after the hard years, the dark years, the endless struggle that now finally comes to an end.   
Paris has been liberated for nearly seven months and the Germans are almost driven out of France altogether by now. The streets are flooded with returning soldiers, with children enjoying the newfound safety, with mothers shopping for the still scarce goods and groceries. There’s more music on the radio, more chatter in the shops, more laughter in the hearts.   
Marsali allows herself to hope again, despite the radio-silence, despite the last letter (safely stowed away in the shoe box under her bed, worn on the edges from frequent reading) being two months old.

They had met nearly six years ago at a small birthday party (one of Marsali’s co-workers), shortly after he was drafted and only a few weeks before he was sent out to the front.   
It was still early in the war then, nobody could have anticipated what was to come, nobody could have imagined the horrors.  
He, most of all, had been hopeful, wanting to make a difference, desperate to prove himself. They were so young. 

Then came the occupation. He was home for a while during those first few months – the most time they’d spent together during their entire relationship. It was bittersweet.   
He was unbearable at times, like a caged lion, shaking with detained force, terribly harsh in his own judgement of himself, smashing bits and pieces around the appartement in fits of anger. He was religiously reading the papers, everything he could get his hands on (even German propaganda leaflets). He was tinkering around with the radio at night, trying to receive the BBC or any allied stations really. He got very drunk several times and she had to go get him at the bistro down the street, usher him home quickly, hoping to not be met by German officers before reaching his front door.  
There were tender moments too; all that time they suddenly had on their hands. There was very little work at the flowershop during the rationing and she was living on foodstamps. He didn’t want to be institutionalized by the Germans and refused to go back to his work as a printer.   
They spent long hours in bed, trying to forget their stomachs’ hunger by focusing on that of their minds, their skin, their heart. They would whisper of better worlds in the dark, never too loud, so as not to scare the possibilities away. They would hold hands and explore eachothers minds until they knew eachother inside out.

She was proud of him when he joined the _résistance_. She really was.   
She was also utterly terrified and suddenly alone again, a stranger under strangers as she had been for years, a foreigner, a true outlander in this proud (even arrogant) country.   
She had found a home in him, a safe haven when she had never truly experienced it even with family. And now this threat – of losing it all again. She started praying, channeling all of her strength and her willpower towards him, urging him to stay alive, to stay with her, stay well. And he did. By some miracle, he survived the battle of Vercors and managed to join the forces of the _résistance_ in Marseille a little more than two months after D-Day. He wrote her letters through it all, sometimes full of despair, sometimes practically flying for his lifted spirits, sometimes painfully tender, sometimes unbearably detached. Each of them was a beacon to her, a sign of life, a tether to their future. And then the letters stopped coming.

It’s her now who’s reading the papers religiously but the news are mostly good and seldomly very specific and she’s convinced in her bones and her heart that he is still alive because how could the sun still be shining if he wasn’t, how could the birds be singing, how could the flowers still smell like spring?

The bell on the front door chimes and interrupts her thoughts. Heavy steps. Then Madame Rosalie’s voice:  
„ _Puis-je vous aider, monsieur?_ “   
Part of her realizes in the pause between that question and his answer. Part of her must feel his presence, acknowledge it as something inherently familiar, something that belongs to her. Possibly it is just a very strong feeling of hope. But somehow she knows, a fraction of a moment before his answer confirms it.  
„ _Je cherche des marguerites._ “  
He calls her _Marguerite_ sometimes, a play on her own name even though it means pearl rather than daisy but he claims it matches her and how could she contradict him when he says it with such reverence and tenderness.  
She’s clinging to him before she even realizes that she moved, roses and tulips scattered on the floor of the backroom, her eyes blind from tears of relief and there he is – solid, his familiar smell a source of great comfort, his strong arms slowly wrapping around her.  
He breathes her in, face buried in her hair and she can feel him shaking (or is it her?).  
„Ye’re back“, she whispers into his shoulder, not daring to let go, not willing to allow even the smallest of spaces to open up between them.  
„Aye, _mon amour_ , I’m back“, he reassures in the same way, mumbling the words into her hair so low that she thinks she might have absorbed them through her skin rather than heard.  
„ _Ah, c’est ton Fergus alors?_ “, comes Madame Rosalie’s voice bursting through their bubble as Marsali takes a small step back to face her, she feels it – the unfamiliar hardness of it, its cool surface against the thin fabric of her blouse.  
One look into his face tells her that he noticed the exact moment she realized and it also tells her of insecurity, of weariness, of pain.  
She takes his hand in hers – _where his hand used to be_ – and stares at the prothesis, the tears that had just stopped flowing welling up again.  
„Oh Fergus“, she whispers, her free hand reaching for him, softly caressing his cheek.  
„Why don’t you take the rest of the day, Marsali?“, Madame Rosalie says softly then, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. „Business is slow anyways and it looks like you two really need some time to yourselves.“

The walk to her appartement is short. They don’t talk much but she is very aware of his presence, his healthy ( _existing_ ) hand brushing up against hers lightly, his breathing, his warmth.  
„Why didn’t ye tell me?“, she asks after a block and he shrugs his shoulders, avoiding her gaze.  
„I didn’t know how. I barely understand it myself.“  
He looks completely lost, smaller than she remembers, like he’s no longer comfortable in his own skin and she takes his hand then, because she wants to anchor him to her, give him back some semblance of security.  
After two blocks it starts to feel right. The warmth of the spring sun dispells the chill under her skin, the sweet smell of fresh crêpes from the bistro on the corner reminds her of better days.   
And him. He’s returned to her. He’s really here even if little parts of him were lost on the battlefield. He’s back and he’s safe and really, who can escape war unscathed? She knows she hasn’t either.  
After three blocks her heart threathens to burst from relief and tenderness and she can’t believe her luck and she can’t wait to take him home.

As soon as her appartement door closes behind them she turns to him and raises on her tiptoes, her hands going into his hair (it’s longer now than when she last saw him), her lips meeting his.  
The kiss is tender at first, it takes him a moment to react but when he does, when his arms come around her and press her to him, when his lips mold to hers perfectly and he sighs, she’s home too.  
When they break apart his face speaks of surprised joy, of cautious happiness.  
„I wasn’t sure you’d want me still“, he admits quietly, his eyes closing in vulnerability. „I thought of not coming back.“  
She makes a small noise, the pain in his voice too much for her, the implication of his words incredibly scary. It makes him open his eyes and his look has changed to determination, reverence and something deeper, darker that has her stomach coil deliciously.  
„But I couldn’t stay away, _Marguerite_. I’m too selfish, I need you too much.“  
To her surprise he releases her then, slipping out of his coat and hanging it on the hook on the door.   
When he turns back to her, there’s a small black box in his hand and she clamps her hands over her mouth to keep herself from sobbing. It’s a lost cause, and she knows it when he really gets down on one knee in front of her, the old floorboards creaking.  
„Are ye serious?“, she exclaims between laughing and crying and he smiles at her (and God, how she’s missed his smile) and opens the box to reveal a delicate gold band, simple but elegant.  
„I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. Through all the havoc and destruction of these last years you have been my guiding light and my safe haven and I never want to be without you again. Marsali Jane MacKimmie, will you marry me?“  
Her knees give in on her and she slides to the floor facing him and throws her arms around him, hugging him to her so tightly, she’s sure he’s going to vibrate along with the wild gallop of her heart and it takes her a moment to conjure up the right words and get them past the lump in her throat and into his ear.  
„Of course I will, my love.“


End file.
